Assignment 1

November 24, 2020

The following bar chart shows monthly total kBTUs of residential and commercial electricity and gas consumption for the Bay Area from 2017 to 2020.

Overall, residential gas use looks a bit higher in April 2020 than in April of years past, which could have been a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, energy use seemed to have returned to normal later on in 2020. This could have been a result of more people spending time at home (residential) rather than at work or in restaurants, at the gym, or in other commercial locations.

It is also interesting to note a potential data error in September of 2017. Electric - Residential and Electric - Commercial usage seem much higher than in the following years. For Electric - Residential, this is largely a result of zip code 93308, which seems to have a potential error in the data, as following years have much lower usage.

The following map highlights which neighborhoods experienced the greatest change in electricity consumption before and after the pandemic began by comparing Q2 commercial and residential electricity (not gas) in 2019 and 2020. Many neighborhoods did have higher electricity use in 2020, though there were only a few zip codes with increases of 50% or higher. There were also some zip codes with less electricity use following the pandemic.

As this map combines commercial and residential data, it is possible that we are ignorning shifts from commercial to residential electricty use, which may be expected following the Monthly Electricity Usage plot above. Additionally, there are a number of neighborhoods where percent change from 2019 to 2020 could not be calculated (NA). These areas cover a decent amount of the Bay Area, meaning this map could underestimate how much electricity was being used overall. Lastly, because gas data is not included, this is not giving us a holistic picture of overall energy use.